View full sizeGetty ImagesPirates rookie Starling Marte homered on the first pitch he saw in the big leagues.

Have patience, Pirates management said to fans who watched his numbers swell at Class AAA Indianapolis, Starling Marte will be called up when he’s ready.

Bucco brass made the call on Thursday and brought Marte to Houston, where he could start on the road and not face as much pressure, despite being penciled in on the lineup card as the leadoff hitter and starting left-fielder.

It looks as though Marte was ready, but Houston starter Dallas Keuchel wasn’t as Marte took Keuchel’s first pitch and deposited it over the wall in left-center.

One major league pitch, one home run for the 23-year-old Marte, who went 2-for-4 against the Astros in the Bucs’ 5-3 victory, pitcher A.J. Burnett’s 12th of the season.

It was another notch in the belt for those in charge of developing minor-league prospects in the Pirates’ organization. Especially those who work closely with the Pirates’ baseball academy in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

Time will tell just how ready Marte is, but it was a tremendous moment for a revitalized Bucco fan base who has latched on to this hustling, loose outfit that is winning games on a consistent basis for the first time since 1992.

Pittsburgh also picked up left-handed pitcher Wandy Rodriguez from Houston and, oddly enough, he started against his former teammates Saturday night.

The Pirates were in need of another left-hander in the rotation to complement Erik Bedard, but the casualty of the move was Kevin Correia, who had won five straight games after losing five straight at the outset of the season.

Correia was relegated to the bullpen and is destined for long-relief stints with Brad Lincoln if the Pirates don’t trade Correia by Tuesday night’s deadline.

It finally looks as though the Pirates are in it to win it (or at least win a wild card berth). These next two month should provide Pittsburgh fans who by now are usually ready for football season to start with a two-pronged dilemma — good baseball and good football simultaneously.

Now that’s livin’ large in the ‘Burgh.

PITTSBURGH NOTES

-- Thursday was the one-year anniversary of umpire Jerry Meals’ horrendous safe call at home plate in the 19th inning at Atlanta last season. The Pirates’ season went south after that loss.

-- Steelers running backs coach Kirby Wilson is back in camp after recovering from serious burns suffered in a house fire in January. He’s not 100 percent, but he’s well on his way. “It’s great to be back,” Wilson told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It’s my most rewarding camp ever.”

-- Two Pittsburgh-area wrestlers are competing in the Olympic Games in London. Jake Herbert from North Allegheny by way of Northwestern and Coleman Scott of Waynesburg and Oklahoma State will be going for gold in freestyle competition.

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